Such lack of discipline takes the cake

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Party leadership. One bloke had it and trashed it by sheer
stupidity. The other bloke wants it, desperately, and could go the
same way. John Brogden and Peter Costello. One state, one federal.
Both with everything to gain. But no discipline, either of them. No
patience either. And no spine. In politics a dangerous,
self-defeating mix.

How did it come to this?

The Liberal Party's John Brogden pinches a woman journalist's
bum at a hotel party and refers to Malaysian-born Helena Carr as a
"mail-order bride". The Labor Party's Bob Hawke tells a hotel
dinner audience of 600 to 700 people a "joke" in which the "humour"
is keyed to the penultimate remark, "f--- Mrs Gandhi!", India's
then prime minister. And what happens? Brogden's behaviour incites
shrieking newspaper headlines, his resignation as NSW Opposition
leader, and a failed attempt at suicide. Hawke's behaviour, utterly
muffled by the press, does nothing whatever to slow him becoming
prime minister 20 months later. Why the double standard?

Why is Brogden pilloried and his career destroyed amid media
frenzy over "sexist" and "racist" behaviour in August 2005, yet
Hawke's outrageous "sexist" and "racist" ridicule of the prime
minister of the world's most populous democracy attracts neither
media lynch mob nor any hint of political "disgrace" in July
1981?

Simple. Ignorant, racist indifference and a very protective
press corps, is why. You know of Brogden's admitted indiscretions.
Let me tell you about Hawke's.

In July 1981 federal Labor held a special national conference at
Melbourne's Southern Cross Hotel. Bill Hayden was Opposition
leader. Hawke, a notorious womaniser but the political press's
hero, was just nine months an MP. Ironically, the conference was
about Labor women's political rights. A highlight was a
fund-raising dinner where politicians stood and told jokes. The
winner, by acclamation, was Labor's deputy leader of the time, the
wonderfully droll Lionel Bowen.

Hawke's joke died in the blocks.

It concerned an Indian lottery in which, when the winning
tickets are drawn, third prize is a round-the-world trip, and
second prize, won by "Mr Mukerjee", is a fruit cake. Mr Mukerjee
complains bitterly. Ah, explains the lottery MC, but the cake is
baked by "our great and glorious leader, Mrs Gandhi." "F--- Mrs
Gandhi," says Mr Mukerjee. "No, no," says the MC, "you will be
wanting first prize." All this told, at ridiculous length, in
Hawke's sing-song mimickry of an Indian accent.

Audience response, apart from mixed guffaws and groans, was
mostly an uncomfortable silence. Yet, although the function was
taped and reporters were present, the Hawke "joke" never made it
into the press. Not a word. Four weeks later, the Indian high
commissioner complained in writing to Hayden and called to see him
in Canberra. Niki Savva, then with Melbourne's mass-circulation
Sun News-Pictorial newspaper (and, many years later, Peter
Costello's press secretary), broke the story on September 3,
1981.

But Savva's paper deleted the Hawke "joke". It even expunged her
reference to it as "ribald". It ran the article well inside. Other
newspapers later picked up on it briefly after Hawke went on ABC
radio the same morning to apologise, admitting the "joke" was
inappropriate and in poor taste, but insisting it was not racist.
He blamed political opponents for spreading it.

In that, at least, he was right.

Only a Fairfax weekly, the now deceased National Times,
printed Hawke's Gandhi "joke" three days after Savva's story
appeared. The Herald, under Jenni Hewett's byline, reported
the Indian high commissioner's complaint in nine gentle paragraphs.
The press, by and large, didn't want to know. It treated the story
as inconsequential. One pundit dismissed it as "a hopelessly old
joke, badly told" by Hawke, and he informed readers: "It won't be
repeated here."

John Brogden has not been so lucky.

What he has been is spineless.

Three weeks after the Hilton Hotel drinks, The Sunday
Telegraph, in a story written out of the Canberra press
gallery, unearthed Brogden's indiscretions last weekend. That same
night Brogden was advised, in the strongest terms, to wear the
flak, admit he'd been a fool and tough it out, once he'd squared
his idiocy with his family. The advice came from within his
parliamentary party and from the broader Liberal organisation.

One of those who phoned to tell him "not to panic" and to hang
in there was former NSW Liberal Party president Bill Heffernan,
later the target of some poisonous misreporting. Yet Brogden had no
stomach for a fight. He caved in the next morning, with little more
than a blubber, amid the most excruciating political press
conference imaginable.

That doesn't excuse his behaviour, whether in his cups at the
time or not. It simply dismisses him as painfully weak. Anyone can
make a mistake. Anyone can make a fool of him or herself. And
everybody does, at sometime, despite the acres of sanctimony when
the media so chooses.

But Brogden, a young man with everything to fight for, couldn't
find the courage to fight for his leadership. Instead, overwhelmed
with shame and self-pity, he quit. He'd shown himself up as a fool.
The Liberals, you'd have to say, are well shot of his
"leadership".

Take heed, Peter Costello.

Our Treasurer has been in public life 15½ years. He's been
his party's deputy federal leader for 11 years (since May 1994) and
his Government's Treasurer since the Coalition regained office in
March 1996. For a politician who turned a mere 48 three weeks ago
he has done very nicely. He should keep in mind that the man whose
job he craves was 22 years in Parliament - and 13 years in
opposition - before ever he became Prime Minister (at age 56).

And if Costello really believes life is being mean to him, he
should not forget that Harold Holt, the Liberals' longest-serving
treasurer (7½ years) until Costello, was 30 years and five
months (elected August 1935) in Parliament before, finally, he
grasped the holy grail of the prime ministership on Australia Day,
1966, only to lose it - and his life - in a wild surf off
Victoria's Portsea 23 months later.

Holt's patience was immense, if only because it had to be.
Menzies was a leader who'd earned the right to determine his
departure at a time of his own choosing. He'd formed the Liberal
Party, in 1944, from a rabble of various non-Labor groups, and
after his coalition took government from Chifley Labor in December
1949, it went on to hold it through another six elections before
Ming opted, at age 71, to hand over to his deputy, the loyal and
patient Holt, 16 years and two months later.

Only two prime ministers before Menzies retired undefeated, both
more than half a century earlier. No prime minister has done so
since. Howard is set on being the next. And Menzies, with that
benchmark retirement age of 71, has laid down the precedent, should
Howard, who turned 66 just a few weeks ago, choose to follow it.
That is, another five years. It depends entirely on him. Like
Menzies, Howard, too, has earned the right, you'd have to
think.

Yet Costello, the boy deputy Howard inherited in January 1995,
thinks he can decide when that time should be. Costello is, like
Keating was, bored with being Treasurer. He wants the king's
castle. Unlike Keating and Hawke, Costello has no agreement with
Howard on a retirement date, and never has. And unlike Keating, he
has neither the balls nor the votes to force the issue to a party
room challenge.

Instead, we get these childish word games Costello has been
playing this week, trailing his coat around the radio and TV
stations, dumping on his colleagues, Malcolm Turnbull in
particular, rabbiting on about leadership, pretending he is
"leading" when all he's doing is being a political pain in the
Government's collective rectum, and causing his own supporters to
tear their hair at what the Treasurer thinks he's doing. They've no
idea, I assure you. Is all the advice coming from Michael Kroger,
Andrew Peacock's son-in-law?

You have to wonder, really.

I mean, there seem to be increasingly heroic stories, attributed
to anonymous "Costello backers", of the sort that Howard should
tell poor Peter what he intends doing on the basis that "tension
over the leadership is damaging the Government". What utter bunkum.
The only people pushing that sort of tosh is the Labor Opposition
and its wallowing leader. The only bloke causing "tension over the
Government's leadership" is Costello himself. And very deliberately
so, too. What his "backers" would most like is for Costello to
discipline his undisciplined mouth.

Instead we get this sort of twaddle:

Melbourne radio's Neil Mitchell, on Thursday: "What did you mean
yesterday when you said, 'I lead this country'?"

Costello: "Well, actually, Neil, let's be precise, it is all
there on the record, but expect [it] to be misrepresented. I said,
as Treasurer and deputy leader in a sense I lead, and I have to
lead in relation to economic policy. That is what I said. I mean,
you can't blame the journalist who wants to sell a newspaper for
turning that round into a headline. What else would you expect me
to do ?"

That isn't quite what he said at all. And what others "expect
him to do", in his own best interests, is just shut up. Instead,
this weekend the Treasurer flies to Indonesia with a plane-load of
invited journalists. Guess what they're all going to be writing
about? Peter Costello, like John Brogden, will yet talk his
leadership to death.